Mark Wilson

Concrete. It's possibly the drabbest material on the planet, but that unto itself makes for a powerful aesthetic all its own. For this week's Shooting Challenge, you shot concrete structures. The results? Cold. Rotting. Geometric. And captivatingly minimal.

WINNER: Foundation

This week's picture was taken from a walkway underneath an arched, causeway bridge on the Indian River Lagoon. Even though the bridge is mostly over water, I didn't try to include any in the picture because I thought the form of the concrete supports was the most important thing and it didn't need any context beyond that. Fujifilm s100fs — f7.1 — 1/160" — ISO 100 — 103mm. [Ed note: scroll down for the full shot]
- Mike Case

Concrete Sentinels

When the contest was announced, i was immediately reminded of "Concrete Sentinels" of a local parking garage... Friends have complained that once one sees the anthropomorphism of the eyes/nose that they can't see the formed concrete as anything but silent watchers. Canon EOS 5D Mark III/ 50MM, f3.2, 1/50, ISO 100
- Daniel Jones

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Turrets

During a stroll through town (Basel, Switzerland) last Friday I remembered the Concrete Gizmodo Shooting Challenge and decided to have a go. Passing by this concrete school (!) building I thought its forbidding façade kind of reflected the icy winter climate that surrounded me. Left the tree at the far end on purpose, to leave some life in the picture. Glad my frozen fingers managed to press the shutter button...
Canon EOS 60D + Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. 55mm, f/5.6, 1/100, 100 ISO
- Beat Mueller

Daytime Nap

This shot was taken at a Buddhist graveyard in a town outside Kyoto, Japan. This sleeping Buddha, a large (20 foot wide) concrete statue at the graveyard's entrance, puts visitors at ease as its tranquility balances out the somberness of death. I particularly like how the clouds on the left resemble a pillow. No color correction was done at all, but photoshop was used a bit to remove a couple of tree branches that encroached on the clear sky. Panasonic GH1, Lumix G Vario 14-45mm, @18mm, f/8, ISO 100, 1/500s.
- James Rogers

The Crew Bolted

Not too far from my house is a development that has been unfinished for years. I headed there to take pictures of the foundations of the houses. This shot is of a bolt left sticking out of a wall, undoubtedly intended for some purpose to which it will never be put. 29 mm, f/7.1, 1/40 sec, ISO 200
- Rob Huber

Martian Plateau

Here is my last minute entry for the concrete photo contest. This was taken with my Sony A77 and the 16-50mm lens zoomed all the out to 50mm,ISO 400 with the aperture at f5.6 and a 1/125th shutter speed. I knew the second I saw that contest that I wanted to photograph the really cool concrete holding the spillway together at Lake Indigo (http://goo.gl/maps/fEive) in my neighborhood. This was taken about as close as I could get, and then I enhanced the clarity, sharpness, vibrance and saturation, to get a shot that to me looks like a false color shot NASA would have taken of a plateau on Mars.
- Lee Burns

High Beams

This is the underside of a bridge near my home. I took twenty or so shots over half an hour looking for the right angle. There were some mossy pics, some with the creek below, but something about this one just screamed CONCRETE for me, so I went with it. Sony SLT-A65V, Tamron 17-50mm, ISO 100, f/32, 3 bracketed exposures
- Julian De Puma

Psychedelic

So I shot a similar shot to this in high school when I was learning and developing 35mm black and white photography for a project on "lines" and will never forget how excited the teacher was to see my finished product. When I saw the Concrete Jungle topic my first thought was to go reshoot this now years later and see what I could come up with. I didn't get there until sundown and couldn't find any light under the bridge so I had to overexpose and underexpose by two stops (along with a normal exporsure) to fill in the background and the concrete. Figured since I was going to have to merge them I'd go with a funky edit that blew out the background and this was the result. Shot on a Canon XTI (400D) with the kit 18-55mm lens, ISO 400 @ f/5.6 over and under exposed by two stops, merged in Photoshop with a NIK plugin.
- Jack Kelly

I-87

This is under the highway (I-87) in downtown San Jose. A very sad, cold place, but perfect for this challenge. Canon T2i, 10mm, f/4, ISO 100
- Diego Jimenez

WINNER: Foundation (full shot)

This week's picture was taken from a walkway underneath an arched, causeway bridge on the Indian River Lagoon. Even though the bridge is mostly over water, I didn't try to include any in the picture because I thought the form of the concrete supports was the most important thing and it didn't need any context beyond that. Fujifilm s100fs — f7.1 — 1/160" — ISO 100 — 103mm
- Mike Case

It was tough calling a single winner this week because this whole collection of photos really makes you appreciate the massive, often beautiful molded spaces that make up our grey infrastructure. See all of the entries in the gallery below. The big shots are on flickr.